January 2020

Joseph fell asleep on Aunt Maia's couch after flying to Salt Lake City and getting ready to go to the MTC

Caleb loves playing at the beach!

Me on our stairway to heaven hike

The marriage retreat we did!

Travis overlooking the H3 overlooking Kaneohe

Malachi is super tired after running up and down the hill so many times!

I love hiking!

Samuel loves to pick the biggest strawberries.  This is at the retreat

Gideon loves to go through the mud!

I love hiking with my sweetheart

Betsy relaxing in the ocean

Austin getting ready to drive off all by herself after getting her license.  

Gideon even loves carrying handfuls of mud with him

Caleb loves finding awesome shells

Grandma and Grandpa Hardy and Joseph all at the MTC at the same time!

Love being able to give!

Talking with Joseph while he is at the MTC

Our hike at Kaen'a Point

The girls finally got on the trampoline

Cardboard box sledding down the hill!

Gideon was not eating with his hands for some reason

Malachi and Gideon loved playing with the Jenga blocks in our hotel room

Joseph on his way into the MTC

Going to the temple with Joseph the first time

When you get home from hiking and all the bathrooms are being used, Gideon gets to bathe in the laundry room sink

My two boys napping!  (Travis was watching the kids while I had a meeting)

Gideon and I hiked to the top of Diamond Head, this was Gideon's favorite spot!

The stats from our stairway to heaven hike, it took 7.5 hours.  It was long and hard, but totally worth it!

So we tried to have some fun during the rest of Christmas break.  As you can see, we got some hiking and beach time in.  I loved hiking to the stairway to heaven hike.  We started in the dark and got a little turned around in the valley section of the hike ended up hiking an extra 1.5 miles more then we needed to.  There were some really muddy sections, and we knew we would be crossing streams many times, so we wore our shower shoes (water shoes) for the first couple miles, until we got to the ridge.  Then we switched shoes to our hiking shoes and spikes.  it was muddy along the ridgeline in a lot of spots too.  I was so glad we had the spikes, or we would have been slipping and sliding all over the place.  It was absolutely gorgeous views.  It was a lot of hiking and by the time we were coming back down, my legs started feeling like Jelly, but we made it together!  I didn't want to move for the rest of the day, but we still had to do a few things.  Travis did this hike with his soldiers at the end of the month, and had a great time doing it then as well.
Austin got her license!  It took her three times, but she finally got it down!  She is so excited to have her own car, and money and freedom to go off on her own.
Travis and I had a big box from a couch ottoman we bought and took the boys to a park with a big hill and had them sled down in the box, they loved it!  It also took a ton of energy to bring the box back up the hill all the time, so they were all worn out by the end, but had a great time!
We also took the boys hiking out on Kaen'a point the northwestern most tip of the island, and had fun hiking along the beach and seeing a monk seal, albatross birds, and whales in the ocean.  Gideon absolutely loved the mud!!
Once the kids got back to school, things were busy getting Joseph all ready to leave for the MTC.  We got to take him through the Temple for the first time, Awesome!!!  He spoke in Sunday before he left and gave a nice talk.  Having him get set apart was a special experience as well.  We drove him to the airport and had a big group hug before he left.  Caleb was crying and didn't want him to leave.
We had a marriage retreat that we did at the end of the month at the Hyatt hotel in Waikiki.  Everyone came, so it was nice to have some time together at the hotel.  Travis and I enjoyed doing the training for all the couples.  I liked planning and running the games.  It was really nice having the three little boys in childcare, it was a nice break.  Travis had to get some work done, so I didn't get to spend any free time with him, but I hung out with Samuel for a while, and Austin and Betsy too.  It was  a nice weekend.
Gideon went through a phase this month where he kept telling me to speak to him in Spanish.  I was trying to put kids to bed one night, and Gideon was refusing to go up the stairs to get ready for bed.  I kept telling him to go up the stairs, and he wouldn’t budge, finally he said “I can’t go upstairs unless you tell me in Spanish!”  Seriously, ok fine.  It took me a minute, but then I told him “Arriba” and he scampered up the stairs to get ready for bed.  I don’t know where he got that from, but just glad it worked.  Silly boy

One morning Malachi looked at me and with all seriousness asked me “Mom have you ever been married?”  I pointed at Travis sitting at the kitchen table near me and just looked at him.  He looked at Travis and then me and giggled and sheepishly said “oh yeah”. 

During church yesterday Gideon was sitting next me, and he hadn’t eaten breakfast before we left, so I had brought a few snacks for him.  Halfway through the meeting Travis reached over and picked a few fruit snacks off my back that were stuck there.  Gideon had stuck them there, the little stinker.  Then at the end of the meeting I went to get up and realized that there were a whole bunch of fruit snacks stuck to my lower back as well as a squirt gun that had slowly been leaking on me throughout the meeting.  I don’t know how Gideon got a squirt gun (I don’t bring those to church) or how he managed to shove it down my back without me noticing, but the sneaky little thing sat there and giggled at me, while I pulled sticky fruit snacks off my back.  Luckily the fabric I had on was quick drying, and all the wetness wasn’t too noticeable.  Then last night I had put the little boys to bed, and after a while I kept hearing their student desk being drug around in their room.  When it didn’t stop, I went to check on them.  I came in and asked why they weren’t sleeping, and kept moving the desk around.  Gideon said he couldn’t sleep, he was stuck!  Sure enough, upon closer inspection Gideon (or Malachi) had tied his ankle to the desk, so every time he moved he had to drag the desk around.  I untied him and tucked him back into bed.  Gideon is really good at coming up with excuses to not go to sleep!